Musings on politics, science, religion, music, and life.

May 04, 2006

The Truth About Pete Rose

When I was a kid I loved baseball. I played whenever I could. And when I wasn’t playing, I was practicing. Sometimes, when I couldn’t find anyone to throw a ball with, I’d go outside, throw the ball as high up as I could and practice running under it to catch it. When I wasn’t practicing, I was thinking about it, reading about it, watching it on television, or listening to it on the radio. I collected baseball cards and memorized the stats and trivia that were printed on the back. I read all kinds of books about baseball, including baseball encyclopedias. I studied the lives of the legends: Cobb, Wagner, Ruth, Gehrig, Mays, Williams, and Mantle. To me, as a kid, the greats of the game of baseball were heroes, demigods even. And the greatest of these, the man I admired more than any other growing up, was Pete Rose.

“Charlie Hustle,” he was called. I emulated his crouching stance at the
plate; when I would draw a walk, I would run to first base just like he
did. I always wore Rose’s number on whatever team I played: 14. I loved
the fact that I shared his birthday. In the mid-to-late 1970s my family
lived in southern Michigan. The Detroit Tigers were my AL team (I
actually got to see Mark “the Bird” Fydrich pitch the year he was a
rookie sensation) but the Cincinnati Reds, because of Pete Rose, were
my favorite team. This was in the days of the “Big Red Machine.” I
reveled in the Reds’ Word Series victories in 1975 and 1976.

In 1979,
when I was 11, my family moved to southern New Jersey. In an act that
could only have been the result of divine intervention, Pete Rose went
to the Philadelphia Phillies at virtually the same time. My new home
was just 20 miles away from the city where Pete Rose would be playing!
I quickly switched allegiances: the Phillies were my new favorite team.
In 1980, the Phillies went to the World Series for the first time in 30
years. It was a great team full of stars and larger-than-life
personalities: Mike Schmidt, Larry Bowa, Steve Calrton, and Tug McGraw
(country singer Tim’s dad). But Pete Rose was the heart and soul of the
team—he brought a winning attitude and a competitive fire to a talented
team that had failed in the playoffs in the late 70s.

My mom, who worked for a bank in Philly, was somehow able to score two
tickets to Game 2. She gave them to me and my dad and one of the
greatest memories of my childhood was born. I will never forget the
energy produced by 70,000 fans jumping and screaming in unison when
“Shake ‘n Bake” McBride singled home a run to tie the game in the 8th
inning on the way to a Phillies victory. Pete Rose and the rest of the
team played inspired baseball that night and throughout the series,
beating the Kansas City Royals in 6 games. For the next few years, my
dad sacrificed time and money to take me to 16 home games per year, so
I could see my hero play. I watched as he broke one record after
another and continued his chase to top Ty Cobb as the all-time leader
in hits.

Even as I stopped playing baseball and began to pursue other
interests, I still watched the game and followed my favorite player
with an almost religious devotion. So when, three years after Rose
retired, allegations surfaced that he had bet on baseball, I was
aghast. Rose denied the allegations. I believed him. He agreed to a
lifetime ban in a deal in which he later said he was snookered by Major
League Baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti. I continued to stand by
him. After all, it seemed like it was his word against some loser
bookie’s. In a clash of credibility, I gave the benefit of the doubt to
my hero. When Giamatti died an untimely death due to heart attack a
week after issuing the lifetime ban, I thought perhaps the baseball
gods were showing whose side they were on.
A year later, Rose was convicted of tax evasion. A mistake that anyone
could make, I thought. Why do they keep persecuting this poor man who
did so much for the game of baseball, I wondered. In 1997, Rose applied
for reinstatement. Commissioner Bud Selig simply never acted on the
petition.
A cowardly move if ever there was one, I thought.

Then, during the 1999
World Series, Rose was permitted on the field as they honored the
All-Century Team. He received a roaring ovation from the crowd. And
some pipsqueak sportscaster named Jim Gray thought it an occasion to
grill Rose over the gambling issue. Again, I was incensed at the way
Rose was being persecuted—by the media and by Major League Baseball.
That the all-time leader in hits, at-bats, and games played, a 18-time
All-Star at 5 different positions(!) could be excluded from the Hall of
Fame was, in my mind, ridiculous. And then in 2004 Rose, in an effort to sell some books and make some
money, finally admitted that he had been lying for 15 years. Yes, he
had bet on baseball. Yes, he had bet on the team he was managing at the
time, the Cincinnati Reds. Yes, the original Dowd report detailing his
gambling activities was accurate.

I think in the back of my mind, I knew it all along. I just didn’t want
to believe it. You see, it’s devastating to learn that the truth about
something you had so much invested in is not what you had always thought
it was. It’s hard to accept. It’s easier to turn a blind eye, to
continue to have faith despite the evidence that is staring you in the
face. It’s hard to admit to yourself and to others that you were wrong,
that your faith was misplaced, that you made a mistake. The words of
truth are hard and cut to the very center. But wrong I was. Pete Rose
was not what I grew up thinking he was—oh, we was a great baseball
player; nobody can ever take that away from the man—but my faith in him
was misplaced. The truth about Pete Rose was more complicated than what
I had believed as a child. I am glad that I am able to acknowledge that
now, as painful as it was to admit. I am glad the truth is now known
and I can accept it.